


how to never stop being sad

by ell (amywaited)



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Angst, Cute, Fluff, Friendship, Happy, Horror, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Nostalgia, dkfjsfjkds yeah thats right bby, horror psychedelia, its not... that bad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-06
Updated: 2020-04-06
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:08:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23513659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amywaited/pseuds/ell
Summary: “You’re gross and ugly,” Richie says, halfheartedly. The summer is warm, and his brain is working at half capacity today. He’s glad for it, really. It’s a welcome break from every other day, a gentle reprise - one that he wishes he could take advantage of more.“Says you, Rich,” Beverly says. She pushes up on her elbows to watch him over her sunglasses. “I think you’re all gross and ugly.”“Thanks, Bevvy,” Bill says. He nudges her thigh with his foot. “We’re all gross and ugly right now, that’s for sure.”“That’s because it’s so freaking hot right now,” Mike groans. He falls back, dropping his head onto the ground. “It’s too warm. I hate the sun.”“You don’t mean that,” Stan says. Richie watches his fingers twist through stems of grass. “Every time it rains, you complain, too.”
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 11
Kudos: 29





	how to never stop being sad

**Author's Note:**

> enjoy! lol
> 
> would love to know how you perceive this piece of writing, so please PLEASE let me know in the comments!!!

There are weeds growing through the cracks in the pavement.

That’s the first indication that things have changed - that life has moved on and grown up whilst the rest of them have been left behind, stagnating. Waiting for things that have already left. It sets Richie’s teeth on edge, and he scuffs his toe along the cracks, brushing through the growth there. A few stones skitter along the tarmac, like they have a life of their own. They fall into the road, and Richie watches them like he just can’t look away.

The buildings look older too, like they’ve grown up without him. Like picture perfect dolls houses, only they’re not anywhere near that. The only thing perfect about them now is their foundations, and even they’ve crumbled with time. Paint chips decorate front doors, and Richie’s fingers itch with the need to pull it off in strips. He thinks he sees ghosts in the window, shadows of former lives, stories lived out long ago. He’s almost afraid to breathe a word of it, afraid to look too closely, for fear of who - or what - he might find.

Derry has dark history. Bloodstained. Long and violent and blackened, burnt to ash. Richie knows that better than most, but he keeps coming back. Coming back to the cursed town, with its bright blue skies and all of its dead eyes, where more spirits walk around than people. After all, those who are dead, are never truly dead. Not here. They breathe on, live on, until they can’t possibly live any longer, and then even longer after that.

Richie feels sick when he thinks about it too long. The sun is bright, and staring up at it makes his eyes water till it feels like he’s looking in a kaleidoscope, so he looks down instead. There’s a daisy, wilted, with half of its petals torn off, pushing through the weeds. He bends over to pick it, rolling the stem between his fingers until the rest of the petals fall off and he’s left with a bright yellow centre. He picks it apart with his eyes and drops it, pink and white and yellow burnt into his mind like he couldn’t ever want to forget it.

A kid cycles past on the road, ringing his bell wildly. Richie feels it echo through his head, bouncing in between his ears until it starts to hurt. He blinks, slowly, blocking out the kaleidoscope sun and the age old weeds, and all the lives that never had the chance to live.

* * *

_ “Hey, Rich!” Bill yells, waving at him from the street corner. He has a new bike. “Eddie’s meeting us at the Quarry. You ready to go?” _

_ Richie nods, hair flopping wildly. His mom wants to cut it, keeps telling him so, never lets him forget, but he likes the tickle of it around his ears. “You got it, Billy-boy!” He calls back, mounting his own bike and pedaling across the road to Bill. _

_ “Look,” Bill says, once he’s close enough to hear without shouting, gesturing proudly to the bicycle. “I got a new bike. Isn’t it cool?” _

_ “Super cool,” Richie says. “Shiny.” _

_ Bill laughs, climbing onto the peddles. “Dad and I spent, like, an hour shining it, last night. Here, listen to how loud the bell is.” He starts ringing the bell, loud and shrill. Richie laughs over the top of it, and Bill continues down the street. The bell sounds like it’s getting louder, sharper, and Bill rings it all the way to the Quarry. _

_ Richie can’t get the sound out of his head, after that. _

* * *

He comes back to himself slowly. The bicycle bell plays a steady backing track to his breathing, keeping it shallow and quick, but Richie can’t remember a time when it wasn’t. The grass in the cracks in the pavement tickles his kneecaps.

“Hey, mister. You alright?” A girl asks. She couldn’t be older than ten, hair in messy braids down her back. Her eyes are bright, and young, and Richie misses them more than he ever thought possible.

“Yeah, fine,” he says, because it would be rude not to, but his throat is dry and his words are croaky and crisp. He staggers to his feet, swallowing through the cotton wool stuck to the roof of his mouth. 

The girl narrows her eyes. Richie doesn’t trust them. Derry doesn’t feel like home anymore. “If you say so, mister. Where are you headed?”

“N-nowhere,” he says, stammering right through it. “Nowhere that matters. What’s it to you?” His jaw tightens, teeth grinding together like he’s losing control over them.

The girl holds up her hands. “Nothing, mister. Nothing at all. I ought to be getting home now. You take care, alright? And listen, mister, between you and me. Don’t stay out after dark.”

She speaks with an age that is beyond her. Richie hasn’t heard that since the last time he was here, since the last time he was running the streets and painting towns red. He doesn’t trust her advice, but the sun is setting, and he supposes she has a point regardless. 

He watches her back disappear in front of him, before he starts off again, back towards his car. He’ll sleep in the backseat, it wouldn’t be the first time he’s done it. The air conditioning is broken, and the engine makes a gut-wrenching rattle when he pushes it above forty, and the radio hasn’t worked since the late nineties, but Richie finds himself more relaxed there than anywhere else, curled into a ball against the door.

The moon is bright, and the day is running away with him, as it so often does. He feels its beams of light burning into his eyelids, like it’s trying to tell him something but they’re speaking in different languages. He wouldn’t have a hope of understanding it, not ever. He could hardly even try.

Somehow, he falls asleep, sinking back into his lungs and retreating into his brain. He dreams of weeds, and glowing eyes, and the sour apple taste of mothballs and distrust, like he can’t quite forget it well enough. A part of him, the part buried dark and deep and hidden, like he’s tried ever so hard not to look, knows he’ll never forget this, no matter how much he wants to.

* * *

He wakes, and all over again, they’re dying. Tearing hearts apart in front of him, screaming and crying and shouting, asking him to fix it, to make it better. To save souls that have been lost for years now. He’s said his goodbyes already, but Richie is learning, and tragedy is unforgivable. Tragedy does not forget, does not grant leeway. It is its own monster, a kraken forced to rise from the deep and never let back down, gasping for a breath that couldn’t possibly exist.

Richie is learning this now. He has always been learning this. It is a lesson that has been a long time coming. Tragedy does not spare any victims. Tragedy has no sympathy. Tragedy has no time for  _ him. _

It doesn’t care. Richie is learning, slowly, not to care either. Death and destruction - that which comes after tragedy - has left an ice cold sheen over his heart. He’s built mile high walls around himself, and God forbid they come tumbling down. 

This will pass, after all. That much he knows. The painful recollections, flashbacks into a life he would rather not remember. It will all pass. As soon as he leaves, as soon as he crosses out of Derry, and he’ll never remember again. 

Richie stops in front of a house. The paint on the window sills is greying and thin, barely there. The fire escape is rusted, but he stares at it like it’s new. Footsteps tumble down it, two children spilling over the edge. Richie’s eyes trace their grins like he’s never seen one before.

* * *

_ “Then do what you always do!” Stan calls, curling his fingers around the handrail. “Start talking!” _

_ Richie lets out a breath, watching his friends climb up the stairs. Beverly leads, her auburn hair bright in the afternoon sun. Richie is fairly certain that wherever she goes, the rest will follow, now.  _

_ There are worse people to follow than Beverly Marsh, he thinks, what with her ginger hair and her apple pie eyes. The ones that belong on a body far older, with much more life left to them. But that, Richie supposes, is what tragedy does to the best of them. _

_ He lets them go. _

* * *

  
  


Someone knocks on the glass. It looks like it hasn’t been cleaned in years, perhaps not since he was last here. His attention is caught, and they pull the window open.

“What’re ya starin’ at?!”

“Nothing!” He shouts. His voice is too quiet. Trash the trashmouth, he tells himself, beep beep, Richie, and all their funny word games. Tragedy. Weeds growing through cracks in the pavement. “Nothing,” he repeats, quieter still. It’s not like it matters, he supposes, because the window is already shut.

Eyes are like windows to the soul, he tells himself. Day in, day out, a useless mantra pasting itself along the back of his head. CLOSE YOUR EYES, RICHIE, OR YOU MIGHT NOT LIKE WHAT YOU FIND, like coldblooded reminders of what’s to come. Or maybe, of what’s already happened.

His breath is getting caught in his chest. No rest for the wicked, or something like that. God, he can barely remember. Richie breathes out through his nose and in through his mouth, and then out through his mouth and in through his nose, cycling through them until he can’t remember which came first, chicken or the egg.

Chicken or the egg, Richie, chicken or the egg chicken or the egg chicken or the egg pick chicken, Richie, pick chicken, chicken or the egg.

A fly buzzes past his nose, loud and unnerving. It halts his thought process for a second, just long enough for him to get his bearings.

* * *

_ Eddie swats the fly away with a disgruntled sigh. “Yuck. Do you know how many diseases flies carry?” He asks, to no one in particular. He gets an answer, anyway. _

_ “Flies don’t carry disease,” Bill says, matter-of-factly. _

_ “Yuhuh, they do,” Eddie says. “All sorts. It’s how disease travels, like those fleas that transferred the bubonic plague. Or mosquitoes!” _

_ “But those are fleas and mosquitoes,” Stan points out. “Not flies.” _

_ “They’re still gross.” _

_ Ben hums. “They’re not that gross. I think they’re interesting. Don’t you think their eyes are cool?” _

_ “No,” Eddie says, firmly. “I think they’re gross, and ugly.” _

_ “You’re gross and ugly,” Richie says, halfheartedly. The summer is warm, and his brain is working at half capacity today. He’s glad for it, really. It’s a welcome break from every other day, a gentle reprise - one that he wishes he could take advantage of more. _

_ “Says you, Rich,” Beverly says. She pushes up on her elbows to watch him over her sunglasses. “I think you’re all gross and ugly.” _

_ “Thanks, Bevvy,” Bill says. He nudges her thigh with his foot. “We’re all gross and ugly right now, that’s for sure.” _

_ “That’s because it’s so freaking hot right now,” Mike groans. He falls back, dropping his head onto the ground. “It’s too warm. I hate the sun.” _

_ “You don’t mean that,” Stan says. Richie watches his fingers twist through stems of grass. “Every time it rains, you complain, too.” _

_ “I hate the sun more,” Mike assures him.  _

_ “You’re like a Brit,” Richie says. “Complaining about the weather all the time.” _

_ “That’s awfully stereotypical of you,” Beverly says, in her best British accent. It’s nothing compared to Richie’s, but it makes them all laugh anyway. _

* * *

He’s pulled from his memories with a harsh breath, heavy and sharp. His lungs kickstart, and he stares at the window for a few seconds longer. There are weeds here, too, but they’re longer and more wild. Like they’ve been here for a while, taking root. Richie is almost jealous.

A car engine backfires somewhere nearby, and a woman shrieks in surprise. It’s piercing, loud, and Richie finds it echoes. He replays it in his head until he can barely remember what it sounded like to begin with. The skies turn purple, whirling and swimming in front of his eyes. Richie sinks to his knees in the middle of the street, burying his face in his hands. 

Dignity has long since been lost on him, and shame is a foreign emotion and always has been. Gravel digs itself into his knees, sharp and painful. Memories flicker through his mind like a slideshow, clicking through them just quick enough that he can’t remember where they all came from.  _ Click  _ and they’re at the Barrens,  _ click _ and they’re in the sewers,  _ click  _ and he’s cutting a line down his palm with a broken Cola bottle.  _ Click  _ and Stan is holding his hand.  _ Click  _ and Bev is lying on his thighs.  _ Click  _ and he’s kissing Eddie softly, slowly, deeply. 

_ Click, click,  _ fucking _ click.  _

He squeezes his eyes shut like that’ll block them out. They make him feel sick, motion sickness from days he doesn’t even remember living. Feeling emotions from breaths he doesn’t remember taking, feeling phantom touches from people who barely exist outside of his own mind any more. 

He hates this. He wants to go home but he is home, but home doesn’t exist anymore, does it, Richie, does it. You have no home anymore, Richie, no one to call home, no one to come back to, no one to care, Richie, no one to care about you. No one, Richie, you have no one. 

His brain feels like it’s spilling out of his ears, spilling onto the pavement in blood red dark splatters, painting grotesque pictures in the dust. His memories are all set out before him, tearing out of his neural pathways and leaving empty space behind and he’s glad for it. There is nothing but ash left.

He could go the rest of his life never thinking about the clown again, or the slow, slow deaths of his friends after, or the loss of every tiny indication of the life he used to have, and it would be too soon. He could go his entire life without it and he wouldn’t miss it. 

Everything in his life is painted grey. Everything is grey and black and highlighted in red, materialism and realism and idealism and that childlike wonder that hasn’t existed since he was ten years old. Life catches up to them all, eventually. And now it’s caught up to him, in it’s long song of pain and pride and heartbreak. He’s singing his last note, and there’s no one there to listen. 

His memories float into dull silence now. Brief flashes, soundless, empty and meaningless. Richie lets it happen. The pressure of quiet pushes out of his brain, pushes against his eyeballs, until they feel like they could explode. 

Maybe he wants them to. Maybe he wants his eyeballs to burst, to spray blood and thick gelatinous mass and a torrent of film tape, of his memories and all that he’s seen. Maybe he wants it all to flood the pavement, to pile up in a tower of mindless remembering, gelatine, and a replay of his life, of Richie Tozier’s Best Moments. 

The trees fill with fog, with smoke and gas that smells so sickeningly sweet, thick and heavy and cloying. It settles on his skin, an almost tangible element, hot and sweaty. Richie breathes it in, lets it permeate his lungs and coat his insides until it's all he knows - all he breathes, and sees, and smells, and feels. And then, it’s all there is.

* * *

_ It’s the last day of school, the first day of summer, and the key to the rest of their lives. The air is warm, and heavy, and Richie’s shirt sticks to him and it’s  _ perfect. __

_ Stan meets him at the trash cans out the front of the school, holding his backpack. Beverly is there, and Ben too, and Mike for moral support. Bill and Eddie are on the way, Richie can see them in the distance. _

_ “Are we ready, boys?” Beverly asks, once they’ve all circled the can. _

_ They each nod, one at a time. She says, “then let’s do this,” and turns her backpack upside down over the trash can. Her books topple out in a waterfall of paper, singing like birds. Ben’s follow, and then Stan’s, and Bill’s, and Eddie’s. They all follow her path, the track forged by her, and they land in the garbage atop hers; like the foundations of a skyscraper, standing tall in spite of itself. _

_ “Go on, Rich,” Bill says, nudging him.  _

_ Richie grins. He tips his bag up too, and his books fall down. Mike pulls a crumpled napkin from his pocket, for symbolism, and sets it on top of Richie’s books. They laugh, and they cheer, and then summer officially begins. _

* * *

He sits up with a gasp. The air is now light, fresh and light, and he can’t breathe in enough. Summer is over now. Summer will never begin again, summer is just a concept now, far off and unknown to him. A memory, another fucking memory. 

The trees are gone too. In their place, arms. Arms, with hands that reach for him, further than arms should. Fingers that are there one minute, and gone the next, until the only nails he can feel are his own, tearing his skin from his body. Until the only hands touching him are his own, running over his body like spiders, like there are so many, and so many more.

And then he can’t remember whether they belong to him or not. 

The ten year old, the girl with the braids from yesterday. She’s here too. Her eyes are gone, and her face is weathered, and her hair is longer. But her smile is the same, conspiratorial, like she knows something Richie doesn’t, and yet, she still holds the childhood freedom he yearns for again.

“Hey, mister.”

“Who are you?”

The girl shakes her head at him. “I’m just a kid, mister. You know, you gotta leave at some point. They’re waiting for you.”

Richie feels his head fill with cotton, with dust bunnies, and with dirt. He shakes it, trying to clear it, trying to excavate himself from it’s depths. “No… no.”

“You have to leave, mister,” the girl says. One of her braids grows longer. She lifts a hand and her index finger forms into a claw before his very eyes, before his exploded, film reel, eyes. “We’ve all gotta go at some point.”

“I can’t,” Richie says, because he can’t. Because he’s stuck here, he’s cursed to be here forever, to remember the days he can’t, and forget the ones he can. To confuse up from down and down from up, and left from right and right from left, and north and west and south and east. Because he’s cursed to stay here, with the ghosts of his friends, and the ghosts of his town, wandering like a ghost himself. Like a shell of the ghost he used to be.

“You gotta,” she says. “Mister, you gotta. ‘Cause they’re all waiting for you. And It’s coming.”

“No…”

“It’s coming, mister, and you gotta go,” she says. Her finger elongates into a claw and back again and again. “You gotta go.”

He was right not to trust her eyes. Judgement day must come for them all, though, and Richie’s waited his turn. He’s waited his turn.

“C’mon, mister,” the girl says. She holds out her hand-claw, and Richie takes it. “They’re waiting.”

So he goes. And the sky turns red, and then black, and finally blue and cloudless. And then summer begins, the spirits inhabit their same four walls and they do what they’ve always done. Richie watches them warily (no one really dies in Derry, Richie, no one. Not even you, Richie ‘Trashmouth’ Tozier. You’ve made a name for yourself in this town, boy, so don’t think you’ll be rid of it any time soon).

But the girl is right. They  _ are  _ waiting for him.

* * *

_ “Richie!” _

_ “Took you long enough, huh, Trashmouth?” _

_ “We’ve missed you so much, Rich.” _

_ “I’m so glad you’re finally here.” _

_ “Where have you even been?!” _

_ “...Hey, Rich.” _

_ “...Hey, Eddie.” _

**Author's Note:**

> so idk if anyones even curious to know, but the way i see this is that richies like, in purgatory in this? like, awaiting his judgement. the girl is some sort of god, and all the other losers are dead, so this is just his sort of, in between moment. its all down to interpretation, though, so if you took it a different i would love to hear about it!
> 
> basically tell me what u think. i am a slut for comments. thank you.


End file.
